Rich Mix could be a subtitle for the East End Film Festival itself but on the 19th of April the aptly named cinema served as the perfect catalyst to ignite the event and bring the melting pot that is East London to a healthy simmer, ready for the week of films, shorts, training and booze-ups that followed.  The newly opened cultural centre, a former garment factory boasting 3 screens, a home for BBC London, exhibition spaces and the all important bar, was heaving with film fans from the local borough of Tower Hamlets, nearby Hackney and the towering City, its creeping cranes slowly drawing closer to the building's glass grid facade.  Within the Rich Mix's darkened screens, with its vibrantly patterned wallpaper that the Anonymous Host reminded is "cheaper than drugs", audiences were treated to the opening film of the 6th EEFF festival; the world premiere of the intimate, revealing and funny documentary With Gilbert & George.

"It's got art, humour, local history, it's got the lot," booms the Host, still Anonymous for "tax reasons", and the film certainly delivers on the EEFF's aim to bring alive the cultural diversity of the East End.  The documentary's director Julian Cole was on-hand to introduce a piece of work that was 17 years in the making and a close study of "the East End's most famous and notorious artists."  Working out of their house in Fournier Street, Spitalfields, just down the road from the cinema, Gilbert & George have consistently challenged the art world for 40 years, way before the area got all trendy thanks to the Hoxton Square revival in the 90s.  When they started it was a forgotten wasteland and the film is a tremendous document about the history of the ever changing area and, like Gilbert & George themselves, the viewer briefly becomes a tourist of the edgy, exciting East End.

For the uninitiated Gilbert & George are something of an oddity, they're never apart, they dress impeccably in old-fashioned suits their mothers would be proud of and appear slightly out of sync with the world, like a time traveling Morecambe & Wise.  Their artistic output is frequently shocking but their motto is always "art for all" and it's work most either love or hate.  What's also intriguing are the men themselves who are always part of their output and the manner in which they present themselves casts them as an extension of the artwork, as if living, breathing, photographing and seeing the East End is an artform in itself.

Cole first encountered Gilbert & George in the 80s when he modeled for them and from there he decided to turn the camera back on the artists who gave him unparalleled access to their lifestyle.  Through interviews backed up by family photos they talk through their childhoods, Gilbert was the son of a shoemaker in Italy while George was brought up by a single Mum in Plymouth who compensated for his disadvantages by sending him to elocution lessons, and what brought them to buy a crumbling house in the East End to share in 1967.  What's impressive is how candidly they talk of their past with wry, deadpan humour that soon becomes infectious and you could spend hours more listening to their revelations and anecdotes.

With the artists constantly onscreen together it becomes difficult to separate out the individuals but Gilbert & George prove there is no such thing and as Cole confirms, "it's not a critical film.  The more and more I've got to know them, the more I've realized how serious they are about art and the power of art."  The dedication to their craft is impressive and while other documentary makers might have probed the tabloid rumours of homosexuality, hinted at here in George's strange book collection, they wouldn't have gotten the 17 year access to show they live the life they chose without compromise.

As Cole puts it, "they decided very, very early on that they would make themselves the art and from the beginning were very conscious of their image.  Of course they're in all of their work because they see that as them speaking to the world.  It makes them quite difficult to film because they're so much a double act that it's hard to get to know them as individuals.  They're always together and you're conscious of not trying to play one of them off against the other but they know each other so well, they've worked together, lived together, for 40 years as a kind of impenetrable duo."

Early success came when the pair, unable to afford traditional art materials, used themselves as living sculptures and placed themselves in galleries singing Underneath the Arches.  This was followed by the ravages of alcohol in some disturbing follies as they pushed themselves to the limit but from there photography became their staple output; grand montages awash with bold colours, shocking words and tiled like an insane stainglass window.  The photographs themselves, of tramps, minorities, addicts, were always available close by.  "The East End has always been in their work from the very, very beginning," continues Cole, "they started taking pictures of what was around them.  All their work is derived from photographs taken within walking distance of their house."

The documentary strays away from art critics and instead offers interviews with the everyday people the work was aimed at and even catches up with some of the other models now immortalized as pieces of art.  These are interspersed with footage of just how turbulent the area was in the 80s and scenes of race riots in Brick Lane bring home the issues Gilbert & George were addressing from the frontline.  "They want to respond in a way which is very personal, which isn't coloured by newspaper reports or party political ideology.  They have a totally unique take on the world," says Cole and in the film proves they have no aversion to the dark side of humanity, of the piss, shit, vomit and blood on the streets that most people try to ignore.  "They despise a lot of the bourgeois values and have very genuine ideas about diversity and life in one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world," says Cole while reaffirming their more conservative standing, "they're more with Cameron, they want to hug the hoodie."

This turbulent time also represents a poignant part of the film when Gilbert & George remember two of their most exuberant models who tragically died young from AIDS.  A slight moment of reflection is all that's needed to indicate the huge emotional impact this had and they rallied in the only way they knew how; through their work.  Angered by the preaching of life after death, which Gilbert innocently asserts is "wrong, and they should stop it," they hosted an exhibition to raise money to fight AIDS and prove that immortality comes from what you do in this life.

They then travel the globe, with Cole close by, breaking barriers by taking exhibitions to Moscow at the beginning of its Cold War thaw using their own money and even to China where they ensured that their under-priced brochure meant the art could be appreciated by even the poorest of people.  They were ambassadors of British art before Brit Art was even conceived and Cole charts their travels with surreal links of them flying through the air, as superheroes, and he confirms, "the East End has been taken all around the world."

In other instances the film remains grounded in Gilbert & George's regimented home life and reveals the interior of their now cluttered abode but some comforts, such as a cooker, they have no need for.  "They do have a telly," asserts Cole, "they're avid fans of Coronation Street.  They don't go to the cinema, they don't go to the theatre, they don't go to parties, they live an almost monastic life.  They're so dedicated to making art they don't want to be troubled with trivial things like cooking and washing.  They're not interested in digested forms of art, they want to just feel the world themselves and not someone's interpretation."  This may lead to the conclusion that they are incredibly pretentious but they come across as approachable gents.  Even when talking about photographing themselves naked all day or their own shit, or "smelly jobbies" as Gilbert refers to them, they maintain an air of calm respectability.

With a major retrospective now taking place at the Tate Modern, which Gilbert & George spent years planning complete with their own specially designed 'put in and fuck off' swear box, With Gilbert & George is the perfect introduction to these extraordinary artists.  Cole himself admits, "I'm not impartial," so the documentary never delves into any deep dark secrets and instead concentrates on cementing the pair's reputation as two men with a singular, unique vision.  Even for viewers with no interest in art it's never alienating and represents an essential slice of East End history.  But what do Gilbert & George themselves think?  "17 years on the film and I'd never shown them anything, they were incredibly patient," says Cole as he remembers nervously inviting them into the cutting room, "they laughed and they cried.  George said it's a masterpiece."

As the Host mentioned, it certainly is a film that's got the lot and the audience congregated in the Rich Mix's main hall afterwards for a drink to the retro DJing courtesy of the Broken Hearts, another primly dressed pair.  With everyone feeling more attuned to the local area they were already planning where to go Gilbert & George spotting, they've always maintained their penchant for walking everywhere.  Don't expect to catch them at work though, as Cole suddenly realizes, "I have never, ever seen them out taking photographs which is extraordinary!"